SAS empowers crime fighters to crack complex cases

Steve Bennett, and Lawrie Elder discuss the launch of SAS Intelligence and Investigation Management and the three top benefits for law enforcement.

SAS GLOBAL FORUM, Denver
(09 kwi 2018)

A single piece of information can be the loose thread that unravels an entire criminal enterprise. SAS is helping law enforcement find more of those threads with SAS® Intelligence and Investigation Management. Powered by SAS Visual Investigator, SAS Intelligence and Investigation Management helps agencies integrate more information to uncover sophisticated criminal activity, make connections in real time, and enhance collaboration in investigations.

Law enforcement operates in an increasingly complex environment, with investigators facing unprecedented amounts of data. Making sense of this data and understanding the underlying connections is critical in any investigation or intelligence-development activity.

Part of the SAS® Viya® family of products, SAS Visual Investigator alerts investigators, case workers or analysts to heightened risks or threats. Combining advanced text analytics with dynamic and interactive visual workspaces, SAS enables analysts to easily grasp causes for events or alerts and act on deep analytical discoveries.

“While the applications of SAS Visual Investigator are diverse, SAS Intelligence and Investigation Management is tailored specifically for law enforcement,” said Michael Ames, Senior Director for Fraud, Compliance and Investigation Solutions at SAS. “It speeds up the grind of poring through piles of reports and provides investigators new leads, and more time to pursue them, to get criminals off the street.”

SAS Intelligence and Investigation Management provides agencies an environment where large disparate data sets can be merged and managed – offering a single view of any given entity. Information is secure, while roles-based security ensures the appropriate level of access is applied to data, preventing unauthorized use. Collaborative workspaces also allow law enforcement professionals to apply traditional investigative and intelligence practices, combined with advanced analytical capabilities.

SAS Intelligence and Investigation Management supports the full range of investigation types, from low-level crime inquiries to complex major-incident response. SAS Intelligence and Investigation Management uses text analytics to search structured or unstructured data (e.g., witness accounts) to aid investigators in isolating relevant entities and linking related records. Through this process, investigators can quickly gain insight into significant networks and relationships. Through visualization workspaces, multiple investigation streams can be simultaneously managed and hypotheses developed through the generation of network link diagrams, timelines and map views.

Cracking down on serial offenders in Cary, N.C.

Already one of the safest municipalities in the country, the Town of Cary, N.C., recently selected SAS Intelligence and Investigation Management to transform its Criminal Intelligence Unit. This unit integrates police and government databases with other data sources to create strategic and tactical assets to support police investigations. The execution of manual searches and the retrieval, filtering and formatting of results is a labor-intensive process, currently requiring manual document creation each time an intelligence artifact is required.

SAS Intelligence and Investigation Management is poised to greatly reduce the time and effort needed to produce intelligence reports, help Cary PD identify the most prolific criminal offenders, and better allocate resources to reduce crime. Data visualization, entity resolution and network analysis will empower Cary PD to identify “core offenders” in a quicker, more objective and more reliable way.

For example, applying the word cloud feature to police records and arrest data can instantly surface the most active suspects and perpetrators. SAS Intelligence and Investigation Management can analyze the resulting list to uncover hidden relationships, provide a fuller view of criminal activities and help determine who meets the core offender threshold.

A better understanding of the patterns and trends in criminal activity will enable Cary PD to deploy resources to better deter and prevent crime. SAS Intelligence and Investigation Management can visualize and geospatially present 911 and incident data to identify “hot spots” that require increased police presence at days and times, as well as to deploy surveillance cameras, increased lighting or other crime deterrents.

“Ultimately, SAS Intelligence and Investigation Management helps law-enforcement agencies put their data to work for the safety and security of the communities they serve,” said Ames. “By allowing officers to become more proactive in their investigations, SAS is supporting men and women in uniform in the critical mission of helping to keep citizens safe.”

SAS Intelligence and Investigation Management is supported by the new SAS Fraud and Security Intelligence Division, launched today. Both announcements were made at SAS Global Forum, the world's largest analytics conference, with more than 30,000 business and IT users of SAS software participating on-site and online.

The SAS Intelligence and Investigation Management dashboard allows investigators to quickly see a record of criminal activity in the area, search various databases and view, create and share reports.

Follow us on Twitter @SASsoftware for all the
latest news and views from SAS.